Project:
Bangladeshi Community Smoking and Oral Tobacco Use

The issue:
Alongside smoking, oral tobacco use within Sandwell is very high, especially within certain community groups. Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council identified that their Bangladeshi community have a high use of oral tobacco.

The Brief:

Siskin was commissioned to develop an intervention with this cohort that would reduce smoking prevalence and raise awareness of the risks and association between oral cancer and oral tobacco use.

Our Approach:

At Siskin we recognise the need to better understand cultural beliefs and behaviours when developing interventions aimed at changing behaviour and values the insights of representative community groups and individuals. Our approach:

• A programme of mixed methods research with a sample of participants from the Bangladeshi community exploring the motivations and barriers to smoking cessation, possible linkages between harms and areas of convergence and divergence within these themes
• Working directly with stakeholders from the Bangladeshi communities we co-designed an intervention that aimed to encourage perception changes and reduce prevalence within the local population
• A tool kit of appropriate and tested assets to support Sandwell MBC to deliver communications and interventions
• Intervention material assets that were generated and co-designed with the audience
• Recruitment of enthusiastic community “champions”
• An asset-based community development (ABCD) plan
• An evaluation report demonstrating the direct link between our insights and application

And as a result:

• Stop smoking referrals through the insight stage
• Developed new community relationships
• Raised awareness of free local stop smoking support services amongst the audience
• Started the conversation with Sandwell MBC and their stop smoking service providers around ways in which to support those who use oral tobacco